Electric Yuba – just how far will it go?

Well, yesterday I found out. After 23km on Sunday, including about 200 metres of climb, I thought I would leave it without charging, and do a few short trips to see how far the battery went. So on Monday the first thing I did was a 26km trip with another 200 metres of climb, straight into a raging southerly for the first half. To give you an idea of how strong the wind was, pedaling into it, with assistance I was struggling at about 17kph. Riding with it on my back, I was doing over 30kph with zero watts on the watt meter. I got all the way home to Whitby, and about 600 metres from home, the battery warning started flashing, and then 100 metres up our street with about 300 metres to go, it cut out. I walked up the rest of the hill. Total distance on one charge of the 13aH battery – 49k. Not bad, even if it is killing me because the gearing is wrong and the controller settings need tweaking.

I just rode up the same hill again to home, and relaxed into it, just pedaling slowly and let the motor and the low gears do their job, and while I wasn’t going to break any speed records it was quite easy.